terms

Badland

Cai Guo-Qiang: Head On could be seen at Deutsche Guggenheim, 2006 : link.
Head On concept:

With few wolves scattered in the front gallery, all ninety-nine wolves run, gallop, and jump toward the far end of the exhibition hall, where a wall stands. The bravery of the wolves is met head on by the unyielding wall. As the leading wolves go down, many more follow with force and determination. As those in the front fall and pile up, those behind take up their positions.

Meanwhile the Harvey Nichols "sale" ad called wolves created by Y&R Dubai won a Bronze Lion in Cannes this summer.

The ASA have banned the ad for the Anti-Terrorist Hotline on the ground it is seriously offensive and makes an undue appeal to fear - thems my cliff notes kids, you can read the full verdict under the link. Radio adverts that make "He likes to keep himself to himself" seem like insta-terrorists are indeed very creepy, and this particular example crossed a line - probably because most UK men who like to keep to themselves recognized their own behavior. I'm a bit miffed there's no hotline for me to call regarding the man at the end of the street here, who has parties at all hours, pays by credit card because he never has any money and in is in perpetual debt, never draws the blind because he hopes to flaunt his wiggly bits to teenage girls who pass by on the local bus route.

A woman in Norrköping has reported the Jarlsberg tv-show bumper idents to the Consumer Ombudsman for their "unpleasant" tagline: "the taste is in the holes."

First of all, it's misleading, the taste can't be in the holes. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized how unpleasant it was.

She elaborates: "I felt provoked. It felt like it was alluding to something sexual. Then I got angry. One wonders what sort of society we live in with this kind of attitude toward women."

She's not the only one with her mind firmly in the gutter. There's even facebook groups dedicated to snickering at how "dirty" the tagline is. There's blogposts musing on how the tagline might have been created by an intern, others go straight to the point that holes "probably taste like fish", and newspaper journalists are wondering if those who like tasteful cheese might be able to buy a bag full of holes. (Great idea, marketing - get on that stat!) It's currently the most discussed piece of news at aftonbladetsbloggportal.

At Aftonbladet the Jarlsberg cheese Managing Director Magnus Ekstrand defends the ads, and find it being pigeon holed as a sexist ad rather odd. "Our cheese has more unique holes than any other cheese. Somewhere there, she chooses to form associations to something which we don't associate to."

and then blahblah, whatever. Because it's clear from his banner that he doesn't believe that peoples designs are their own. What is he trying to say here? That Reese's Peanutbutter cups support him as their candidate? That he's a direct descendant of H. B. Reese? That he has a peanut butter center? That there's no wrong way to eat him? (oh god, I went there). That he's "perfect"?

What does the Hershey company think about this? Does it fall under "parody"?

It's artist Geoffrey Cottenceaus "Animaux" series that clearly has inspired Estrellas campaign for assorted nuts. McCann Norway who created the campaign have admitted to Dagens Media that they have never contacted the artist. Now the campaign is running in Sweden as well, and still nobody has spoken to Geoffrey Cottenceaus. Crazy, right? Nuts, even. (Pun!)

So, everyone remember the Billboard Magazine kickass Cannes Grand Prix winning "Icons" ads, where the images of famous musicians would be made with red, yellow, blue and black images of other musicians? Yeah, it was tres clever, especially the little photo booths where you could get one of these images made from a photo of you.

Kind have an itch to scratch here. It reminds me a tad of the Spiegel campaign from DDB Dusseldorf made in 2006. Hundreds of wee icons would make the images of Bush, Mao and the iconic portrait of Che - little bombs, oil drills, that sort of thing.

This post comes from a discussion me and Joelapompe had over email regarding the Bottle voodoo between Bavaria and Brutal Fruit badlander. Seems we're not quite done with the hypnotic bottles quite yet as we've found a brand new ad, created in India that has such a bad case of Demo Love it looks like it's an adaptation ad.

Bikini babe comes out of the water just as Denver Deo guy lifts deo-can out of his bag, then everything he does with the bottle mysteriously affects the woman as well. Until the point where he takes the cap off, and she teasing begins undoing her bikini-bottom, but *zing* she was just teasing him all along.

Gee, where have I seen that before? Oh wait, I know I know *waves hand in the air* pick me pick me! The Marca Bavaria ad that aired in 2003 in Canada, that's where!

In the NZ version corner we have comedian Dai Henwood calling out "Mon Tage" and the clip ends with a headbanging hardrocker raising hell and confetti with his electic guitar riff.... In the US version from Deutsch LA, we have Kevin Butler delivering the "Mon Tage" line before explosions and action lead us to the headbanging hardrocker dude and his riff in the confetti.

You discovered this now? The Huggies print and commercial were released in May, the jean diapers are a summer item only and available June-July at Amazon and participating stores - but Libero has with Forsman and Bodenfors help been doing toddler summer fashions in Sweden since 2007 when unstable toddlers walked down a runway wearing the bling-bling diapers.

We've done this before , discussed album covers that look like other album covers, and as it turned out the genre of twin album covers never end. There are homages, there are spoofs, there are weird coincidences and then there's the really obvious. Hanson mimicking The Ramones on a Ramones tribute album. Yeah, it's not a Badlander, thanks for the tip tho.

The most ironic moment in Cannes during the festival was when me and French Badland King Joelapompe are strolling down the Croisette and we see these ads. Conversation goes a little like this;

- Look at that, Joe says, copy-cat ads. Like "Joelapompe". I bet they even took the images from my site.
- That's totally been done before as far as I recall. For Xerox, too.
- Yes, it has, I have it at home. I can make a post.
- I don't like the line. "If you make a copy, copy right". Pun!

Then it was simply a race to who would post it first. Joelapompe won - but in my defense he left a whole day earlier than I did. ;)

Looks like we've found yet another case similar to the Toshiba chairs in space that looked like Simon Faithfull's chairs in space.

There's currently an Augmented Reality Billboard in Times Square for Forever 21, and while it's not a clever PSA mirroring peoples behaviour to make a point, it uses the same neat-o tech to make a 50 foot woman on the billboard interact with the crowds on the street. She even picks people up and throws them off the screen.

We would like apologise unreservedly once more for this error. We didn’t realise that the film that we chose was a copy, we would have instantly removed the submission from the competition if we had. As it stands, the original winner has now had their prizes revoked and we will be announcing a new winner soon.

Amsterdam based creatives Bas van de Poel and Daan van Dam made these clever T-shirts where Dutch football supporters can flip their shirts over their heads and become their favorite player as they root for their team.

Clever, right? Yes, it's very funny, and highly apropos as football players are known for yanking their shirts over their heads in celebration. However, we've seen this fun trick before.